Romney Prepared To Announce Presidential Bid

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a holiday reception in Manchester, N.H., Thursday, Dec. 21, 2006. Romney will step down from office next month and is considered a possible 2008 presidential candidate. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

It appears that Mitt Romney is jumping into the race for the 2008 White House. This is through CBS4 News in Boston:

(AP) BOSTON Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is poised to announce his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination in two phases early next month, a top adviser told The Associated Press on Friday.

The Massachusetts chief executive is expected to file paperwork as early as Jan. 2 with the Federal Election Commission, establishing a presidential campaign committee and permitting himself to begin raising money for his race on the first business day of the new year. Romney will leave office on Jan. 4.

As soon as the week of Jan. 8, Romney will hold a ceremony to officially declare his candidacy, said the adviser, a top aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity in advance of the official filing.

The timing is somewhat dependent on when Sen. John McCain of Arizona makes an expected announcement about his own campaign for the GOP nomination, the Romney aide said. McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who Romney's staff views as their top rival for the nomination, has already formed a presidential exploratory committee but held off making a speech declaring his candidacy.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has also formed an exploratory committee.

So far, we're looking at a three-way Republican race between Romney, McCain, and Giuliani. At this early stage of the race, I'm not sure of what to say, except that Romney is apparently jumping on the Bush administration's bandwagon for supporting the war in Iraq. Consider this from the CBS4 News story:

In Iowa on Wednesday, Romney reiterated his support for President Bush and said a withdrawal from Iraq "would be a mistake." In New Hampshire on Thursday, he deflected conservative concerns about his record on gay marriage and abortion. He said he now describes himself as "firmly pro-life," despite citing his tolerance for abortion rights during his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, after researching the embryonic stem cell issue.

So Romney continues to support the Bush administration's war in Iraq, claiming that a withdrawal "would be a mistake." I'd guess that Romney would support an increase in American troops in Iraq, as John McCain has advocated. Even Rudy Giuliani is supporting the Bush administration, where he resigned from the Iraq Study Group commission, calling both an American withdrawal from Iraq a "terrible mistake," while also rejecting the ISG linking of the Iraq war with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All three of these Republican candidates are supporting a Bush administration policy that 7 out of 10 Americans disapprove of. But neither McCain, Giuliani or even Mitt Romney are interested in serving on behalf of the American public's welfare, or for the nation as a whole. Their support for the Bush administration's disastrous policy in Iraq is nothing more than serious ass-kissing to the hard-lined neoconservatives that still control both the Republican Party and the Bush White House. To criticize this administration now could result in a fracture of the Republican Party between the hard-liners who continue to support the war, and whatever centrist or moderate elements that may still exist within the party which would favor some type of American withdrawal from Iraq. Such a fracture within the Republican Party could cost them the White House in 2008--Something that the Republicans will refuse to accept. And so we get this display of unity and support to the president by these three candidates--support for a war that the U.S. has lost.